Dr.GÝtzsche has been critical of screening for
breast cancer using mammography, arguing that it cannot be
justified; His critique stems from a meta-analysis he did on
mammography screening studies and published as Is screening for
breast cancer with mammography justifiable? in The Lancet in
2000. In it he discarded 6 out of 8 studies arguing their
randomization was inadequate.

Holland and Barrett / Solgar, Who owns them? The Carlyle
Group

American Addict with Dr. Gregory A. Smith

"American Addict" unveils how America has gone
from the land of the free to the land of the addicted. America
represents 5% of the world's population but consumes 50% of the
world's prescription pills and over 80% of the world's
prescription narcotics.

Human Lab Rats - Exploiting the world's poor for clinical
trials

Big pharmaceutical companies are increasingly
outsourcing clinical trials to developing countries to create
new medicine. Taking advantage of relaxed regulation, it's the
world's poorest who are paying the price.

Whether you like him or hate him, Bill
Maher is completely correct in this message. Messages like this need to be pumped into our
TV sets during commercials... not all these drug commercials with which we're constantly
bombarded. No wonder why the rate of recreational pharmaceutical drug use is skyrocketing
and accidental overdoses has taken over the leading cause of accidental death in 15
states.

With the finer details of health reform now
taking shape, health policy expert Peyton Howell joins "In the Know" to discuss
the impact on pharmaceutical and biotech manufacturers. Ms. Howell offers insight into how
the mid-term elections might play into the pharma community's strategic decision-making,
as well as why changes to issues like 340B pricing and Medicare physician reimbursement
hold significant potential to disrupt "business as usual" in the delivery of
healthcare.

The world's pharmaceutical giants stand
accused of using people in India as guinea pigs for their new medical products - sometimes
even without their consent. And Human rights groups say those who do know what's
happening, often don't get a full explanation of the dangers they face.

People for Reason In Science and Medicine
is a pro-health, pro-environment, anti-vivisection organization which promotes a healthy
plant-based diet, a clean environment and exposes the lies of the bio-medical industry. We
educate the public regarding harmful pharmaceuticals, the truth behind disease charity
organizations and, using solid scientific principles, refute any and all claims that
medical breakthroughs have come about through the fraud of vivisection.

A joint report into the handling of the
H1N1 outbreak, to be aired on Al Jazeera, has found that key scientists who advised
governments to stockpile drugs, had previously been on the payroll of big drug companies.
The scientists were working for the World Health Organisation, whose decision to name the
flu a "pandemic" is also coming under scrutiny from European investigators. More
than 12,700 people worldwide have died from H1N1 - but the virus has turned out to less
deadly than feared. However, the WHO initially urged rapid development of treatments and
vaccines, fearing the virus had the potential to kill millions. As a result wealthy
countries spent billions on medicines which many believe are now unnecessary. Al Jazeera's
Jonah Hull reports on how big drug companies may have influenced the decisions that helped
them profit from the H1N1 pandemic.

The companies that make up the
pharmaceutical industry are among the largest corporations in the world. In 2004 their
combined global sales were over half a trillion dollars, with Pfizer and Johnson &
Johnson leading the pack. Together, these businesses have come to be known as Big Pharma.

Exposing Big Pharma. Richard Schwartz, a
Christian conservative Western New York pharmacist for 47 years, explains the high price
of medicine: kickbacks, greed, sleaze and deregulation. Schwartz, who's now in his fourth
career in pharmacy, reveals why medical insurance companies don't hold down (but rather
increase) the price of drugs, how the drug industry can prey on an uninformed people (the
media magazines, newspapers, radio and television -- is paid off via big pharma's
advertising dollars). Dr. Schwartz, Frewsburg, NY, spoke Jan.13, 2005 at Jamestown¬s
Prendergast Library. The event was sponsored by Citizens for Ethical Choices.

A new study on healthcare lobbying
published in the Chicago Tribune has found that healthcare companies have spent $635
million on lobbying over the past two years. At least 166 former congressional aides
involved in shaping healthcare legislation have registered to lobby for healthcare
companies. This includes at least fourteen former aides to House Majority Leader Steny
Hoyer and at least thirteen former aides to Montana Democratic Sen. Max Baucus, the chair
of the Finance Committee.

Video -
Sheller, P.C. Instrumental in Two Largest Whistleblower Settlements in U.S. History2009 has seen two historic
pharmaceutical settlements: a $1.4 billion settlement involving Eli Lilly's Zyprexa in
January and Pfizer's $2.3 billion settlement earlier this month. Both times, the
Philadelphia-based Sheller, P.C. law firm's unique makeup has been central in aiding the
U.S. government recoup record numbers of dollars for federal and state governments,
taxpayers and whistleblowers. In the Pfizer matter, lawyers Stephen Sheller, Jim Pepper
and Brian McCormick represented Ronald Rainero, a Pfizer employee-turned-whistleblower who
experienced first-hand the pressure to promote Zyvox, a powerful antibiotic, off-label.
The company promoted Zyvox as superior to similar drugs, even though the FDA sent a
warning letter to Pfizer in 2005 about these very claims. Off-label promotion helped push
Zyvox sales to more than $1 billion - all the while bilking the government and putting the
public's health at risk. Rainero blew the whistle, working in concert with the U.S.
Attorney's office in Boston and Sheller lawyers. "Our firm is uniquely qualified to
handle these qui tam cases," states Sheller who himself brings four decades of civil
litigation experience successfully battling automotive, tobacco, pharmaceutical and other
corporate giants. "These matters are joint efforts between the government-through the
various U.S. Attorney's Offices- and the plaintiff's bar. Brian McCormick served in the
FBI, working on similar investigations on behalf of that agency. Jim Pepper knows all too
well the pressures pharmaceutical sales reps are under to break the law - he is a former
pharma rep himself." "Whistleblowers know that they can trust us," says
Sheller. "That's one reason we have helped recoup $3.7 Billion for the government in
just nine months. From our standpoint this is the work firms should be doing. And,"
he added "we're not finished yet."

Video -
Prescription for DisasterFor over 35 years , he has
fearlessly stood face to face with the most powerful and corrupt institutions on behalf of
the American Public. Dr. Null has authored over 300 original investigative reports and has
written, produced and directed numerous award-winning documentaries that uncover the
cover-up time and again. See the powerful trailers of "Prescription for
Disaster", "Fatal Fallout", "Autism: Made in the USA", "Gulf
War Syndrome: A Deadly Legacy", "Friendly Fire: Exposing Gulf War
Syndrome", "Gulf War Syndrome: Killing Our Own", and "The Drugging of
our Children".

Assuring the public that prescription drugs
are safe is a tricky business, because the data are often locked in pharmaceutical company
vaults. Bruce Psaty has used publicly available court documents released in lawsuits to
write about drug-safety problems that have been kept secret by the drugs makers. His
findings call into question not only the behavior of drug companies, he says, but also the
work of reporters. In a parallel project, he has combined large population-based cohort
studies with data from gene chips to uncover genetic causes of disease, a project that may
in the future help lead to better treatmentsand safer drugs. Bruce M. Psaty, MD,
Ph.D. - Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology - University of Washington. In addition to
work on drug safety and genetic causes of illness, Psaty, who holds an M.D. and Ph.D., has
published extensively on conflict of interest in medicine and the design and conduct of
clinical trials.

Big pharmaceutical wants you addicted to
their prescription meds which are much worse for you than street drugs. The prescription
drug industry is a multi-billion dollar industry and they are finding new ways to make
money at the expense of your consciousness and brain, and now they are getting your
children hooked on them as well with a variety of made up ailments. Pharma has polluted
the FDA and it is bought and paid for and VERY corrupt! These drugs now kill an estimated
42,000 people every year.

Fox News Big Story with Douglas Kennedy on
how Big Pharma leaves out the bad studies and downplays the nasty side effects of their
highly addictive drugs.

Big Pharma Cash Cow

The companies that make up the
pharmaceutical industry are among the largest corporations in the world. In 2004 their
combined global sales were over half a trillion dollars, with Pfizer and Johnson &
Johnson leading the pack. Together, these businesses have come to be known as Big Pharma.
In the US, the core of Big Pharmas immense profits is from sales of prescription
medication. And since these drugs can only be prescribed by medical professionals, most of
the industrys promotional and marketing activities are directed at doctors, pharmacists
and other health care providers. The companies of Big Pharma hope these campaigns will
lead to new prescriptions for their brands. In recent years, Big Pharma has pushed its way
into the traditional doctor/patient relationship and found a new way to increase sales -
by targeting patients directly and independently, largely through television advertising.
Between 1996 and 2004, industry spending on Direct to Consumer Advertising (or DTC) rose
over 500 percent. Now, even before walking into their doctors offices, patients have
already been exposed to millions of dollars worth of persuasive advertising that
encourages them to ask their doctor how a particular brand of drug might help them. In
this new landscape, the most vital question for American consumers is this: How might the
influence of one of the most powerful for-profit industries in the world affect the way we
think about our health and well-being?

US drugmaker Pfizer has agreed to pay
$2.3bn (£1.4bn) in the largest healthcare fraud settlement in the history of the
Department of Justice. It comes after the firm was found to have illegally promoted four
drugs for uses which had not been approved by medical regulators. A subsidiary of the firm
pleaded guilty to misbranding drugs "with the intent to defraud or mislead".

The international drug company Merck had a
hit list of doctors who had to be "neutralized" or discredited because they had
criticized the painkiller Vioxx, a now-withdrawn drug that the pharmaceutical giant
produced.

A recent study in Oregon suggests that drugs designed for treating the most severe mental
illnesses are often prescribed at inappropriately low doses and at considerable expense,
for use in conditions where their benefit has not been established. In this case,
prescription drugs that might cost as much as $20 to $25 a day were being widely used to
treat problems for which they were not FDA-approved. Some of those problems could have
been addressed with generic medications costing $1 a day, with better results and less
risk of serious side effects. This is a reflection of widespread use of medications for
"off-label" uses that have not been carefully considered or approved by the Food
and Drug Administration, researchers said, some of which are unnecessarily raising medical
costs and reducing the effectiveness of health care. The research was done by scientists
in the College of Pharmacy at Oregon State University, the Department of Psychiatry at
Columbia University, and Oregon Health and Science University. It was published in the
Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, and funded by the National Institutes of Health.
"It's legal for a physician to prescribe a medication for something other than its
FDA-approved uses, and based on good studies or clinical judgment it may be
justified," said Daniel Hartung, an assistant professor of pharmacy practice at OSU.
"However, the approved uses are usually a pretty good proxy for real, proven
effectiveness. And if in fact drugs are being used inappropriately, it not only can be
very expensive but also pose an unnecessary health risk." Both of those problems were
found in this study.

It's no secret that the pharmaceutical industry trades in junk science. Prescription drug
companies distort research, fudge measures of drug effectiveness and generally control our
knowledge of what works in medication. Big Pharma's track record of shady science is a
serious problem, especially considering the fact that recent discussions about creating a
Comparative-Effectiveness Research Institute currently hold a place for prescription drug
companies on the organization's board.

Stopping a cancer trial early - is
it for the benefit of patients or industry?

New research has identified a growing trend for trials of new cancer treatments to be
stopped prematurely before the therapies risks and benefits have been properly
evaluated. In a study, published online today (Wednesday 9 April) in the cancer journal,
Annals of Oncology [1], Italian researchers analysed 25 randomised controlled clinical
trials that had been stopped early because they had started to show a benefit to patients
and found that the numbers had increased dramatically in recent years. They warn that this
could lead to a systematic over-statement of the effects of treatment, and that patients
could be harmed by new therapies being rushed prematurely into the clinic. Out of 14
trials stopped because they started to show benefit to patients and published between
2005-2007, the researchers found that 11 (79%) were used to support an application for
marketing authorisation at the European Medicines Agency (EMEA) and the United States Food
and Drug Administration (FDA). This suggests a commercial component in stopping
trials prematurely. In fact, this strategy (i.e. stopping trials early for benefit) could
guarantee quicker access to the market for companies. On the other hand, a quicker
clinical drug development may lead to an immature benefit/risk balance of new
drugs, Dr Giovanni Apolone, one of the authors, told a news briefing yesterday
(Tuesday).

Nurse practitioners don't realize
how much their prescribing is being influenced by drug marketing

Family nurse practitioners need to be more aware of the commercial pressures they face as
a result of their increased involvement in prescribing, according to a survey published in
the March issue of the UK-based Journal of Advanced Nursing. "Our detailed study of
84 family nurse practitioners (FNPs) showed low awareness of how marketing by
pharmaceutical companies affects clinical decisions and creates conflicts of
interest" says Dr Nancy Crigger, from William Jewell College, Missouri, USA.
"However they were clear that some marketing activities, promotional items and gifts
were less ethical and acceptable than others. For example, gifts that benefited patients
and conferences were more acceptable than resort seminars and office equipment." Dr
Crigger, herself a qualified FNP, adds: "The influence of marketing on physician
prescribing has been widely researched and this indicates that the more involved
physicians are in marketing, the less likely they are to recognise when their clinical
judgement has been compromised. "Our study suggests that the same is now happening to
FNPs who have been given greater responsibility for prescribing some types of
medication."

A New York jury has concluded that pharmaceutical company Lederle Laboratories was
responsible for the injury to a man who contracted polio from a vaccine 30 years ago, and
ordered it to pay him $22.5 million. Dominick Tenuto became infected with polio in 1979,
shortly after his daughter received a vaccine made by Lederle from a live polio virus.
Tenuto alleged that he had been exposed to the live virus while changing his daughter's
diaper.

Doctors being paid millions to
prescribe high doses of anemia drugs; "rebate" loophole is legalized bribery

Doctors in the United States are being paid hundreds of millions of dollars a year to
prescribe drugs for anemia produced by the pharmaceutical companies Amgen Inc. and Johnson
& Johnson, the New York Times reports. These payments come in the form of substantial
rebates, by which the companies cover a significant part of the doctors' cost for
purchasing those particular pills (called EPOs) and dispensing them in their offices. Such
payments are legal, and the companies insist that they are completely proper. According to
Johnson & Johnson, the rebates "reflect intense competition," and are not
intended to encourage doctors to prescribe the drugs. But critics have charged that the
rebates amount to bribery, and may encourage doctors to prescribe EPOs at unsafe levels or
when they are not really required.

French drugmaker Sanofi-Aventis SA is facing renewed challenges on its obesity drug
Acomplia following the release Friday of two negative studies and the recent launch of a
lawsuit against the company in the U.S. for allegedly making misleading statements about
the drug.

Previous work has shown that, when a drug study was funded by the company that made that
drug, the results might be biased in favour of that drug because the methods or analyses
were manipulated. New research published online today shows that, for blood pressure
drugs, studies are now much less likely to have biased results but still tend to have
overly positive conclusions favoring the company's products.

Cracking down on medical industry payments to doctors, the Vermont legislature has passed
a law requiring drug and device makers to publicly disclose all money given to physicians
and other health care providers, naming names and listing dollar amounts.

Two Dartmouth researchers call for greater scrutiny of the relationship between medical
journalists and the health care industries they cover. Their study was published online
today, Nov. 19, in the British Medical Journal, or BMJ. The BMJ paper outlines three areas
where journalists might become entangled in conflict-of-interest issues - during
educational activities that may be drug company sponsored, when accepting sponsored
awards, or in the day-to-day practice of reporting the news by relying too heavily on
industry supplied sources. "The media play a role as society's watchdogs," says
Steven Woloshin, an author on the paper and an associate professor of medicine and of
community and family medicine at Dartmouth Medical School (DMS). "Good medical
journalism can expose links between doctors and rewards from pharmaceutical companies. But
who's looking to see whether the journalists are being influenced?" Co-authors on the
paper, titled "Who's Watching the Watchdogs? Medical Journalism and
Entanglement," are Lisa Schwartz, associate professor of medicine and of community
and family medicine at DMS, and Ray Moynihan with the School of Medicine and Public Health
at the University of Newcastle in Australia. Schwartz and Woloshin are also affiliated
with the Veteran's Affairs Outcomes Group and the Center for Medicine and the Media at The
Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice. The authors believe
relationships between drug companies and journalists might result in more favorable news
stories, in a similar fashion to how industry funding of medical research is associated
with more favorable research outcomes.

Senators who protected Big Pharma
received millions of dollars from drug companies

Senators who received substantial donations from pharmaceutical companies were
instrumental in making a new drug bill more industry-friendly, according to studies by
nonprofit groups and remarks by some of the senators themselves.

Study Offers Insight Insights About
How Industry Funding Compromises Integrity in Academic Research

A new study from the University of Virginia Health System has found that academic
researchers who are highly reliant on industry support are most likely to have experienced
questionable pressure from sponsors and to have first-hand knowledge of integrity breeches
within their work environment. Those breeches not only compromise the well-being of
medical research participants but also impact research initiatives, publication of
results, interpretation of research data and scientific advancement. Funded by the
National Institutes of Health, through the Office of Research Integrity, the UVA study was
published in the March 2009 issue of Accountability in Research and marks the first
attempt to acquire updated empirical data about financial arrangements and conflicts of
interest between industry and investigators at academic research institutions. The study
was conducted via a survey mailed to 1,548 clinical and nonclinical researchers at the 33
U.S. universities that receive the most research funding. To encourage candor and protect
anonymity, the survey did not ask respondents to report their own behavior. Rather, it
asked about their first-hand knowledge of questionable research integrity practices in
their institutions and departments.

The David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA is one of only nine medical schools out of 149
to earn an 'A' grade in a nationwide survey by the American Medical Students Association
of educational policies governing students' contact with the pharmaceutical industry.
"We are proud to be in the top 6 percent of medical schools addressing this important
issue," said Dr. Andrew Leuchter, associate dean of the Geffen School of Medicine.
"It is crucial that our nation's physicians be trained to make decisions in the best
interests of their patients, free of influence from private industry." UCLA was one
of the first U.S. medical schools to adopt tough industry-relations guidelines. In
November 2006, UCLA prohibited all industry gifts to faculty, staff and students; banned
industry advertising materials and sales calls in patient care areas; and limited the use
of drug samples to circumstances in the best interests of patients, such as cases of
financial need.

It is a scientific fact that ARV drugs are some of the most toxic substances that can be
given to the human body without killing it immediately. The extremely harmful side effects
of these drugs include drug-induced immune deficiencies, the failure of various organs of
the body and death. These side effects are listed in every patient information leaflet
required by law to be attached to ARV drugs.

Safer Medicines Campaign is an independent patient safety organisation of doctors and
scientists whose concern is whether animal testing, today, is more harmful than helpful to
public health and safety. Our goal is to protect human health by promoting human-specific
medical research.

Knowing about financial relationships between medical researchers and the companies that
sponsor their studies has little effect on most patients considering enrolling in a
clinical trial, according to a new study from the Duke Clinical Research Institute.
"The patients in our study were very clear - They told us they care about these
relationships and want to be fully informed about them. But at the same time, the
information didn't substantially affect their decision to enter a trial," says Dr.
Kevin Weinfurt, a medical psychologist at Duke and the lead author of the study. What
seemed to be more important in the decision-making process was the patients' pre-existing
level of trust in medical research in general, Weinfurt says. The findings, appearing
online in American Heart Journal, reveal that patients are astute enough to draw
distinctions between various types of financial arrangements, finding some reasonable, and
others, less so. Researchers from Duke University Medical Center, Johns Hopkins Berman
Institute of Bioethics and Wake Forest University conducted a telephone survey of 470
patients diagnosed with coronary artery disease who agreed to go through a consent process
involving enrollment in a hypothetical clinical trial. Investigators first assessed the
patients' overall level of trust in medical research through a four-item questionnaire and
then randomized them into one of three disclosure groups. Patients who were told that the
doctor leading the study also held stock in the company sponsoring the research were the
least willing to participate in the study. They also spontaneously offered three times the
number of negative comments about the relationship than participants in the other groups,
using words like, "disingenuous," "unacceptable," and
"unethical." Ten members of this group also spontaneously said they would not
take part in a trial where the lead investigator held stock in the company sponsoring the
trial. Patients who were told that the sponsoring company covered the cost of the trial,
including the physician's salary, were generally accepting of such a financial
relationship, saying, "OK, that sounds more appropriate. So there's no payment to
him, but through the university. OK, I'm good."

AstraZeneca Plc cant block testimony by a medical expert that its antipsychotic
Seroquel can cause weight gain and diabetes, a federal judge ruled. The witness, Donna
Arnett, professor and chairwoman of the epidemiology department at the University of
Alabama at Birmingham, contends that Seroquel causes metabolic changes, which can lead to
diabetes without weight gain. She also contends metabolic risks occur with Seroquel
throughout treatment, according to court papers.

The FDA has proposed allowing the testing of experimental drugs on terminally ill patients
once the drugs have passed the first safety testing phase, but before they have received
final approval. The plan has already sparked controversy, with physicians staking out
positions both for and against the proposed rule change.

A legal loophole is counteracting Canada's ban on direct-to-consumer drug advertising and
has exposed Canadians to more than $90 million worth of ads, including those for drugs
with life-threatening risks, according to a study by UBC researchers. Barbara Mintzes,
Steve Morgan and James M. Wright from UBC's Centre for Health Services and Policy Research
analyzed advertising spending on prescription drugs from 1995 to 2006 and saw spending
rise from less than $2 million per year prior to 1999 to more than $22 million in 2006.
The increase in advertising spending coincided with a policy change in 2000, when Health
Canada allowed "reminder ads"  ads that state the brand name without
additional information or health claims under the price advertising provision in the
Food & Drug Act. This provision was created in the 1970s to allow consumers to compare
prices of prescription drugs. "This loophole is being exploited to advertise
prescription-only medicines to the Canadian public, including those with U.S. 'black-box'
warnings and those subject to Health Canada safety advisories," says Mintzes, an
assistant professor in the UBC Dept. of Anesthesiology, Pharmacology & Therapeutics.
The U.S. and New Zealand are the only two developed countries that allow
direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) of prescription drugs. However, the U.S. prohibits
reminder ads with a "black box" warning  the country's strongest
regulatory warning of serious harmful side effects. Canada is the only country in the
world where prescription drug advertising to the public is banned while "reminder
ads" of such drugs are allowed.

Everywhere in western medicine you find the Caduceus symbol: It's the staff entwined with
two serpents, with wings at the top. You'll find it emblazoned on medical texts, medical
school certificates, medical websites and even in hospitals and medical buildings.

Dr. Paul Offit of the Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia earned at least $29 million
as part of a $182-million sale by the hospital of its worldwide royalty interest in the
Merck Rotateq vaccine. The amount of income distributed to Offit could be as high as $46
million. Offit has refused to say how much he made from the vaccine.

Everybody likes something free, and free prescription drug samples are no exception.
Patients love to receive them, and doctors feel good about handing them out. The practice
of providing free drug samples is based on the tacit assumption that sampling
does much more good than harm. In two separate news releases within the past year by the
Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the trade organization that
represents the country's largest and leading drug companies, a senior vice president
claimed that free samples improve patient care, foster appropriate medication use, and
help millions of financially struggling patients. He averred further that samples benefit
physicians by exposing them to new treatment options [1],[2]. In this essay, we question
the assumption that good trumps harm when prescription drugs are provided free to
practicing doctors. We argue that sampling is not effective in improving drug
access for the indigent, does not promote rational drug use, and raises the cost of care.

In a national survey of department chairs at medical schools and teaching hospitals, more
than half report relationships with industry, including receiving financial and in-kind
support, according to a study in the Oct. 17 issue of JAMA. The authors suggest that these
findings underscore the need for the disclosure and management of these relationships.

The researchers also found evidence of selective reporting of the results from these
trials. For example, Sim and colleagues report that a pivotal trial in which a new drug
works better than an old drug is more likely to be published than a trial in which the new
drug does no better. This is a form of publication bias that may lead to an
inappropriately favorable record in the medical literature of a drug's true risk-benefit
profile relative to other standard therapies, and can lead to preferential prescribing of
newer and more-expensive treatments, say the authors. These new results provide a baseline
for monitoring the effects of the FDA Amendments Act 2007, which was introduced to improve
the accuracy and completeness of drug trial reporting. Under this Act, all trials
supporting FDA-approved drugs must be registered when they start and the results of all
the outcomes declared at trial registration as well as specific details about the trial
protocol must be publicly posted within a year of drug approval on the US National
Institutes of Health clinical trials.gov site.

It's a long-standing and crucial question that, as yet, remains unanswered: just how
common is scientific misconduct? In the online, open-access journal PLoS ONE, Daniele
Fanelli of the University of Edinburgh reports the first meta-analysis of surveys
questioning scientists about their misbehaviours. The results suggest that altering or
making up data is more frequent than previously estimated and might be particularly high
in medical research. Recent scandals like Hwang Woo-Suk's fake stem-cell lines or Jon
SudbÝ's made-up cancer trials have dramatically demonstrated that fraudulent research is
very easy to publish, even in the most prestigious journals. The media and many scientists
tend to explain away these cases as pathological deviations of a few "bad
apples." Common sense and increasing evidence, however, suggest that these could be
just the tip of the iceberg, because fraud and other more subtle forms of misconduct might
be relatively frequent. The actual numbers, however, are a matter of great controversy.
Estimates based on indirect data (for example, official retractions of scientific papers
or random data audits) have produced largely discrepant results. Therefore, many
researchers have asked scientists directly, with surveys conducted in different countries
and disciplines. However, they have used different methods and asked different questions,
so their results also appeared inconclusive. To make these surveys comparable, the
meta-analysis focused on behaviours that actually distort scientific knowledge (excluding
data on plagiarism and other kinds of malpractice) and extracted the frequency of
scientists who recalled having committed a particular behaviour at least once, or who knew
a colleague who did. On average, across the surveys, around 2% of scientists admitted they
had "fabricated" (made up), "falsified" or "altered" data to
"improve the outcome" at least once, and up to 34% admitted to other
questionable research practices including "failing to present data that contradict
one's own previous research" and "dropping observations or data points from
analyses based on a gut feeling that they were inaccurate." In surveys that asked
about the behaviour of colleagues, 14% knew someone who had fabricated, falsified or
altered data, and up to 72% knew someone who had committed other questionable research
practices.

Drug Industry Marketing Direct to
Consumers and Doctors May Lead to Prescription Overuse

Prescription drugs are heavily promoted to health care providers worldwide. But in only
two countries, the U.S. and New Zealand, prescription drugs are also strongly promoted
directly to consumers. Because these direct to consumer ads typically use emotional
appeals to urge consumers to consider medical causes for their symptoms, they may increase
physician visits and, in turn, physician diagnoses and prescriptions. Not surprisingly,
these advertisements are controversial. A new study from the University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill School of Medicine shows that direct to consumer advertising was initially
linked to more physician visits and that physician promotion was linked to more
prescriptions. The findings will be presented on Sunday May 31st at Digestive Disease Week
in Chicago, Illinois.According to lead author Spencer D. Dorn, MD, MPH, fellow in
gastroenterology & hepatology, direct to consumer advertisements may increase patient
awareness and empower them to discuss their health concerns with their physician, and
professional promotion may increase physician recognition of constipation and IBS.
But promotion to physicians may result in overprescribing and overuse of even mildly
effective drugs such as tegaserod before adequate information on their health risk is
available, Dorn said. The study involved the drug tegaserod, brand name Zelnorm, a
drug for chronic constipation and irritable bowel syndrome that was intensely marketed to
physicians as well as the public from 2002 to 2007 ($122 million in direct to consumer ads
and $127 million in physician promotion in 2005 alone). The researchers sought to
determine the relationship between this promotional campaign and the number of office
visits for abdominal pain, constipation, and bloating, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS)
diagnoses, and tegaserod prescriptions.

In an editorial published early online today, JAMA Editor-in-Chief Catherine D. DeAngelis,
M.D., M.P.H., and JAMA Editorial Counsel Joseph P. Thornton, J.D., write about a recent
court ruling regarding litigation involving JAMA and the Archives of Internal Medicine
(AIM) that significantly threatened the integrity of our peer review
process.Attorneys for the pharmaceutical company Pfizer, Inc. had issued subpoenas
last year to obtain confidential information from the journals concerning studies
published on the pain relief medications called COX-2 inhibitors  (cyclooxygenase 2
inhibitors) celecoxib and valdecoxib.  the subpoenas sought all documents
regarding the decision to accept or reject manuscripts, copies of rejected manuscripts,
the identities of peer reviewers and the manuscripts they reviewed, and the comments by
and among peer reviewers and editor regarding manuscripts, revisions, and publication
decisions. For months, JAMA and AIM consistently argued that the sanctity of the
confidential peer review process should not be violated. In a ruling issued
March 14, 2008, the Court agreed with JAMA and AIM that information kept confidential from
Pfizer, the general public, and the medical community at large was irrelevant to the
pending claims.  JAMA and our Archives journals have historically and
deliberately kept unpublished manuscripts and peer review comments confidential. This
promise to reviewers and authors allows the peer review process to work in an unrestrained
environment. The subpoenas attempted to invade the peer review process, and we
are delighted that Magistrate Judge Keys said so when he ruled they could not be enforced
against us.

n six short years, Humira (adalimumab), Abbott Laboratories' rheumatoid arthritis (RA)
medication, cited in both articles, has gone from wonder drug to
wonder-how-it-got-approved drug; more results from safety reviews are expected in
November.

the American Cancer Society delays embracing the life-saving Pap smear for 15 years - in
part because doctors don't want to share slide-reading revenue with mere technicians. So
the Kettering laboratories at the University of Cincinnati delve into workplace exposures
to lead and other cancer-causing chemicals but keep the results buried permanently as
"trade secrets." So the door revolves furiously "of cancer researchers in
and out of cancer-causing industries."

Michael Jackson's death gives us an opportunity to reflect on the way he was treated by
the media (and the public) while he was alive. Through his work, Michael Jackson went to
great lengths to send a message of love to the world -- to inspire others and add joy to
our lives -- and yet he was derided as a monster by the tabloid media while being
humiliated by the comedy routines of late-night talk show hosts.

This is what we're up against - Big
Pharma spent $66.5 million already this year

This is what we're up against, the full financial weight of pharmaceutical companies, the
Insurance companies, the hospital association, and the AMA who represent some
professionals. Big Pharma alone is pumping $1.2 MILLION A DAY into defeating meaningful
Health Care Reform.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has halted payments on a research grant to Emory
University, following the revelation that the psychiatrist in charge of the research
concealed hundreds of thousands of dollars in drug company payments, possibly in violation
of university and federal conflict-of-interest rules.

Results from a recent pilot study of the uptake of pharmaceuticals and personal care
products (PPCPs) by fish in U.S. rivers have garnered considerable attention since they
were published online 25 March 2009 ahead of print in Environmental Toxicology and
Chemistry. The study, led by Baylor University chemistry professor C. Kevin Chambliss and
environmental science professor Bryan Brooks, broke new ground by assessing chemical
contamination of wild fish at a variety of sampling sites, screening a relatively large
and diverse array of PPCPs.

200 Harvard Medical School STUDENTS are confronting the administration demanding an end to
pharmaceutical industry influence in the classroom. A front page report in the Business
section of the New York Times should bestir some of Harvard Medical School alumni. 200
Harvard Medical School STUDENTS are confronting the administration demanding an end to
pharmaceutical industry influence in the classroom. "The students say they worry that
pharmaceutical industry scandals in recent years - including some criminal convictions,
billions of dollars in fines, proof of bias in research and publishing and false marketing
claims - have cast a bad light on the medical profession. And they criticize Harvard as
being less vigilant than other leading medical schools in monitoring potential financial
conflicts by faculty members."

Countless U.S. doctors regularly give away free drug samples provided by the
pharmaceutical industry to their patients. It's a practice that may simply seem, at first
glance, like an altruistic way to help sick people save money. However, two academics have
written a report just published in PLoS Medicinethat lambasts this tradition as not only
costly in the long run but downright dangerous to the health of patients.

Is It Legitimate To Stop Clinical
Trials Early on Account of Their Opportunity Costs?

After the failure of three large clinical trials of vaginal microbicides, a Nature
editorial stated that the microbicide field requires a mechanism to help it make
rational choices about the best candidates to move through trials [1]. In this
month's debate, James Lavery and colleagues propose a new mechanism, based on stopping
trials early for opportunity costs. They argue that microbicide trial sites
could have been saturated with trials of scientifically less advanced products, while
newer, and potentially more promising, products were being developed. They propose a
mechanism to reallocate resources invested in existing trials of older products that might
be better invested in more scientifically advanced products that are awaiting clinical
testing. But David Buchanan argues that the early stopping of trials for such opportunity
costs would face insurmountable practical barriers, and would risk causing harm to the
participants in the trial that was stopped.

The makers of antidepressants like Prozac and Paxil never published the results of about a
third of the drug trials that they conducted to win government approval, misleading
doctors and consumers about the drugs' true effectiveness, a new analysis has found.

The Drug Companies Are At It Again
- Doctors Prescribing Psychiatric Drugs for Weight Loss

You may have read some of our articles on ADHD and alternative methods to the typical
prescription drugs used to address the condition. Apparently people are taking notice,
because the use of these drugs for treating ADHD and related conditions has decreased.
Unfortunately, however, certain prescription drugs (like Adderall) are still being
prescribed for other uses . . . namely weight loss. In fact a recent news article reported
that celebrity Lindsay Lohan regularly uses Adderall to stay slim (perhaps too slim). Keep
reading for a perfect example of how drug companies manage to keep afloat with little or
no regard to your health.

Recently there have been numerous reports suggesting that in the rush to get these drugs
to the public, clinical trials may not only be poorly executed, but actually manipulated
deliberately to reflect only positive results.

Better strategies to tackle ghostwriting in the medical literature are the subject of a
debate by leading authors in next week's issue of the open-access journal PLoS Medicine.
Ghostwriting is scientific misconduct, argues Peter GÝtzsche, Director of the Nordic
Cochrane Centre, Copenhagen, Denmark, because it is dishonest and often does not allow for
proper accountability of the role of authors and study sponsors in the publication
process. "Court cases that allowed access to industry files have shown that ghost and
guest authorship are common," says Dr. GÝtzsche, citing a recent example involving
the anti-inflammatory drug rofecoxib (Vioxx) in the Journal of the American Medical
Association (JAMA). But Jerome Kassirer, former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal
of Medicine, disagrees. He states that while ghostwriting "debases the fundamental
tenets of the medical profession" and can jeopardize patient care, we still do not
have enough evidence of its existence. "We must be careful not to impose excessive
regulations to solve problems that may not be threatening," argues Dr. Kassirer. A
third perspective on ghostwriting comes from an international group of professional
medical writers who argue that so long as their contribution to publication is explicitly
disclosed, "the communication expertise and health care knowledge" of
professional medical writers can be an untapped resource to help researchers publish and
disseminate their research. They propose a new checklist for authors using medical writers
that can be included with manuscript submission and encourages appropriate disclosure of
writing assistance.

New Study on Effects of Disclosing
Financial Interests on Participation in Medical Research

Knowing how an investigator is paid for running a research study surprisingly plays a
small role in patients' willingness to take part in clinical trials. However, according to
a new Johns Hopkins University study more participants are troubled when they are told
that the investigator could profit or lose money depending on the results. In an effort to
learn more about the effects of disclosing an investigator's financial interests on
potential study participants, researchers from the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of
Bioethics, Duke University Medical Center, and Wake Forest University surveyed 470
patients from an outpatient cardiology clinic. Each of these patients, who were diagnosed
with coronary artery disease, agreed to go through a consent process over the phone for a
hypothetical clinical trial. The study, published in the October issue of the American
Heart Journal, found that simply revealing an investigator's financial interest in a study
does little to affect the patient's decisions to enroll in a hypothetical clinical trial.
What the study did find was that patients were more concerned about certain types of
financial interests, especially when the investigator owned stock in the company financing
the study.

Pharmaceuticals sold in Sweden
cause serious environmental harm in India

Many of the substances in our most common medicines are manufactured in India and China.
Some of these factories release large quantities of antibiotics and other pharmaceutical
substances to the environment. There is an obvious risk of these releases leading to
resistant bacteria. Research from the Sahlgrenska Academy at University of Gothenburg,
Sweden, shows that Sweden is a major consumer of pharmaceutical substances from factories
that fail to adequately treat their wastewater. As it is difficult to find out where the
pharmaceutical substances are manufactured and how much is released, it is impossible at
present for consumers to avoid contributing to this environmental harm. These findings are
presented in the medical journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology and are
highlighted today in a news article in Nature. Last week the research of the Swedish group
became headline news in New York Times, Washington Post and Times of India. "We used
to think that pharmaceuticals that ended up in the environment mostly came from the use of
the medicines and that the substances were dispersed through wastewater. We now know that
certain factories that manufacture substances release very large quantities of active
substances," says associate professor Joakim Larsson of the Sahlgrenska Academy in
Gothenburg,Sweden, one of the research scientists behind the studies.

Do you remember Vioxx? It was the anti-inflammatory pain medication taken by an estimated
80 million arthritis sufferers around the world from 1999 to 2004. The incredible success
of the drug was due in large part to its supposed safety.

Nearly every doctor in the United States accepts gifts of some sort from pharmaceutical
companies, but in many cases there is no benefit to patients, according to a study
published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Researchers surveyed 1,662 U.S. doctors
and found that 94 percent of them reported "some type of relationship with the
pharmaceutical industry." Eighty-three percent of respondents reported receiving
gifts of food at work, and 78 percent reported receiving free drug samples. More than 33
percent of doctors reported receiving monetary payments from drug companies in exchange
for attending medical meetings, giving lectures or signing up patients to participate in
drug tests.

NewsTarget.com, a leading natural health news and information site, has launched
NewsTarget DrugWatch(TM), a free online resource that reveals the nutritional deficiencies
caused by over 540 brand-name prescription drugs. The pages are provided free of charge as
a service to enhance the health and safety of consumers.

Drug companies aren't supposed to minimize the toxicity of medications, but that's what
Lilly was doing, a retired Food and Drug Administration medical officer, John Gueriguian,
testified. An expert witness for the state, Gueriguian was on the witness stand a second
day.

The White House is taking steps to kill the FDA reform legislation recently passed in the
House of Representatives that would require drug companies to publicly post clinical trial
results so that doctors, researchers and the public could review them. According to a
report in Inside Health Policy, the White House sent congressional staff an
"unofficial statement of administration policy" that opposes this provision in
the House bill. The blocking of this provision would allow drug companies to continue to
conduct their clinical trials in secret, hiding results from the public and cherry picking
only those clinical trials they wish to make public.

Nanyang Technological University (NTU)s Associate Professor Zhong Guofu has made a
significant contribution to the field of organic chemistry, in particular the study of
using small organic molecules as catalysts, in the synthesis process called
organocatalysis. Such synthesis process takes place for example, during the production of
chiral drugs. In his study, Professor Zhong, who is from NTUs School of Physical and
Mathematical Sciences, has successfully created the first example where an organocatalyst
is able to be recycled (i.e. multiple reactions achieved with the recycled
catalyst) during the synthesis process thus increasing its yield/effectiveness. Previously
no one has been able to recycle the organocatalysts directly (i.e. only single
reactions performed) leading to the limitation of the use of organocatalysis in the
industry. This ability to recycle and produce multiple reactions thus
increases the efficacy of the organocatalysis, making it a more efficient process,
something that has not been demonstrated before. It also means that fewer chemicals are
used in the synthesis process, making it a far more green and less toxic
process.

The European Commission today launched a major crackdown on the pharmaceuticals industry,
warning that it intends to "intensify its scrutiny" of Big Pharma in a bid to
bring cheaper generic drugs on to the market more quickly.

Dr. Janice Dorn writes, There is a contagious epidemic of lies spreading all over
the world, and it starts with rot at the highest levels of government. We are drowning in
a cesspool of lies. All you have to do is open your eyes and ears. The litany of lies is
everywhere. Even those who are doing everything possible to lead lives of radical honesty
will slip and catch themselves in a lie. Maybe its a little white lie or
something that is euphemistically called an error of omission or a slip
of the tongue. Nonetheless, a lie is a lie. Why do people lie? Because they can.

More than 40 years after beta blockers were first used clinically, scientists can finally
get a detailed, three-dimensional look at the drugs molecular targetthe
beta2-adrenergic receptor. This receptor hails from a family of proteins called G
protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) that control critical bodily functions, several of our
senses, and the action of about half of todays pharmaceuticals. Because this is the
first known structure of a human GPCR, the work promises not only to speed the discovery
of new and improved drugs, but also to broaden our understanding of human health and
disease.

Restrictions on Off-Label Marketing
and Promotion of Drugs by Pharmaceutical Companies Should be Strengthened, Researchers Say

Researchers are asking for tougher penalties and fines for pharmaceutical companies that
market drugs for off label promotion, according to a study published in the
October 28 issue of the open access journal PLoS Medicine. New regulations are needed to
address this practice, say Adriane Fugh-Berman, M.D., an associate professor in the GUMC
Department of Physiology and Biophysics, and Douglas Melnick, M.D., a preventive medicine
physician in the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. In the article,
Fugh-Berman and Melnick address public health issues associated with off-label promotion
and marketing. Both authors have extensive experience with the pharmaceutical industry.
Melnick once worked in as a physician in industry medical affairs, which supported
pharmaceutical marketing efforts. Fugh-Berman is the principal investigator of PharmedOut,
a publicly-funded project to educate physicians about the influence that pharmaceutical
companies have on drug prescribing.

The American Medical Association (AMA) has launched an investigation into allegations that
the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) used threats in an attempt to
silence a professor who drew attention to a journal author's failure to disclose a
conflict of interest.

Big Pharma and the FDA- Suppress
the Science, Ban the Natural Substances, Sell the Drugs

In 2005, an up-and-coming pharmaceutical company made a big mistake: they invested
millions of dollars into developing a drug only to discover that the only active
ingredient of the drug, pyridoxamine, was really a common, naturally occurring substance
that has been sold for decades at low cost to consumers in the form of a dietary
supplement, and has always been available in commonly consumed foods such as chicken and
brewer's yeast.

Research led by The University of Arizona College of Pharmacy has found that medication
prescribers correctly identified fewer than half of drug pairs with potentially dangerous
drug-drug interactions. These findings raise concern because of the high number of drugs
Americans take: an average of 2.3 medications is prescribed during each physician office
visit. A synopsis of the research was published in May Research Activities, a digest of
research findings intended to contribute to the national policymaking process. The
researchers, led by Daniel Malone, PhD, professor at the UA College of Pharmacy, mailed a
questionnaire to 12,500 U.S. prescribers who were selected based on a history of
prescribing drugs associated with known potential for drug-drug interaction. Prescribers
were primarily physicians, physicians assistants and nurse practitioners. Recipients
were asked to classify 14 drug pairs as contraindicated, may be used
together but with monitoring or no interaction. Respondents could also
state that they were not sure.

Exposure to small promotional items from pharmaceutical companies, such as clipboards and
notepads, appears to influence medical students' unconscious attitudes toward the marketed
product, according to a report in the May 11 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one
of the JAMA/Archives journals. Students whose medical school restricts marketing practices
had less favorable attitudes toward the product following exposure to the items, while
those at a school with no such limitations responded more favorably. "Discussions
about the influence of pharmaceutical promotion on physicians often focus on gifts and
payments of relatively large economic value," the authors write as background
information in the article. "The underlying assumption is that smaller gifts are
unlikely to exert influence on prescribing decisions." However, marketing and
psychological research suggests that even trivial items can sway attitudes and behaviors.
David Grande, M.D., M.P.A., of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and
colleagues conducted a randomized controlled experiment involving 352 third- and
fourth-year medical students. Of these, 154 were enrolled at the University of
Pennsylvania School of Medicine (Penn), which has a policy prohibiting most gifts, meals
and samples from drug companies. The other 198 attended the University of Miami Miller
School of Medicine (Miami), which permits these marketing practices. One hundred and
eighty-one of the participants were randomly assigned to be unknowingly exposed to small
branded promotional items for the cholesterol-lowering medication Lipitor, including a
clipboard and notepad used when they signed in to study appointments. The other 171
students received no such priming. All of the participants completed a test of implicit
attitudes toward Lipitor (one of the most heavily promoted brand-name statins in the
United States) and Zocor (which is available generically and considered to be equally
effective). The test involved matching the brands to attributes of the brands (such as
pleasant and unpleasant) in a computerized image- and word-association test. Differences
in reaction times help reveal unconscious attitudes. The students also reported their
explicit (conscious) attitudes toward both drugs by completing a questionnaire about
safety, superiority, efficacy and convenience.

A recent cover story in a struggling news magazine, under the title "Crazy
Talk:" accuses Oprah Winfrey of spreading "dubious advice" in a wide range
of health issues from menopause and hormone replacement therapy to autism, cancer, aging,
and weight loss. The tone of the article was the same tiresome blend of gotcha journalism
and selective fact-reporting that fills tabloid coffers.

Influential senators working to overhaul the nation's health care system have investments
and family ties with some of the biggest names in the industry. The wife of Sen. Chris
Dodd, the lawmaker in charge of writing the Senate's bill, sits on the boards of four
health care companies.

Can an fMRI scan determine the presence or absence of disease? To date, no evidence
convincingly shows that fMRI, designed to measure cerebral metabolism, is sufficient to
diagnose a specific underlying disease. So what's going on here?

It was the pharmaceutical industry that told Congress in 1982 that they were going to
leave the nation without vaccines if they didn't get liability protection but have opposed
making it less difficult for vaccine victims to obtain federal compensation in the U.S.
Court of Claims under a 1986 law that gave them liability protection. It is Pharma
lobbyists, who bully the FDA into fast tracking vaccines like Gardasil and who sit at the
CDC's policymaking tables urging that new vaccines be recommended for use by all children
so they can persuade state legislators to mandate vaccines like influenza vaccine.

In the April 2008 issue of the Harvard Health Letter, researchers highlight how to manage
seven common conditions without taking medication. While no one should stop taking
prescribed medication without talking to a doctor, the researchers write that with
discipline, the nonpharmacological approach can do as much as pills in many cases.

The lives of 22,000 patients could have been saved if U.S. regulators had been quicker to
remove a Bayer AG drug used to stem bleeding during open heart surgery, according to a
medical researcher interviewed by CBS Television's 60 Minutes program.

Senators Herb Kohl, D-Wis., and Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, have introduced a bill to
require companies to disclose the gifts that they make to doctors, in an effort to avoid
undue influence on the prescribing of treatments. The Physicians Payments Sunshine Act
would require all pharmaceutical and biological drug and device manufacturers to disclose
any payment to a doctor valued at more than $25. The payments to be reported would include
not just money, but also speaking fees, trips and other such gifts.

Bayer AG, Germany's biggest drugmaker, and Onyx Pharmaceuticals Inc. stopped a study of
the Nexavar cancer drug against lung tumors because the product failed to help patients
live longer than standard treatment.

The latest round of scientific fraud from Big Pharma arrives in the form of yet more junk
science conducted by Merck on its blockbuster cholesterol drug Vytorin. Results of a
clinical trial involving the drug were finally released this week, nearly two years after
they were known by Merck, and only after Merck attempted to manipulate the data by
redefining the outcome of the trial after the fact!

Most of the world has used plant-based remedies for hundreds if not thousands of years.
Here, there's plenty of skepticism, but Chris Kilham, professor of ethnobotany and
explorer in residence at the University of Massachusetts, says herbal medicines are much
safer than synthetic drugs.

Plainly stated, the FDA is set on becoming a drug company involved in every aspect of drug
development for the next century. This pipe dream involves using sophisticated FDA
software and related technologies to set the standards for the future of medicine, which
will soon require your DNA in an FDA-owned supercomputer if you would like medical care.
The FDA will help design all drugs from the ground up. The FDA, through the Reagan-Udall
Foundation for the FDA, will control all patents and licensing arrangements regarding the
drugs that are developed.

Not long ago, I asked a respected cancer researcher if he could send me raw data from a
trial he had recently published. He refused. Sharing data would make the study team
members uncomfortable, he said, as I might use this to cast doubt
on their results.

the Los Angeles Times published a large special series on prescription drug marketing and
its influence on consumers, doctors and researchers. Much of it was review, but it may be
shocking news to many readers.

If I contracted cancer, I would never go to a standard cancer treatment centre.
Cancer victims who live far from such centres have a chance. Professor Charles
Mathe, French cancer specialist Doctors are too busy to dig into the statistics of cancer
treatments, they assume that what they are taught at school or what is demonstrated in the
pages of briefing journals is the best treatment. They cannot afford to suspect that these
treatments are only the best for the pharmaceutical companies that influence their
'institutions of higher learning'. Paul Winter, The Cancell Home Page, dedicated to
exposing the fraud behind pharmaceutical company controlled medical research institutions
and their deliberate withholding of information from the general public on safe cancer
treatments.

Dr. Joseph Biederman, of Harvard Medical School, is a world-renowned child psychiatrist
whose work has helped fuel an explosion in the use of powerful antipsychotic medicines in
children. He earned at least $1.6 million in consulting fees from drug makers from 2000 to
2007. However, he did not report much of this income to university officials.

European drug companies seek to end
direct-to-consumer advertising ban; hope to follow U.S. drug advertising model

Citing a dearth of independent health information for consumers, European drug companies
are aggressively lobbying for a change in E.U. rules about direct communication between
companies and patients. But many watchdog groups fear that this is merely an attempt to
bypass the E.U.'s ban on drug advertising. Concerned with a loss of profits to U.S. and
Japanese drug companies, a group of industry and government representatives started a
discussion forum in 2001 called G10 Medicines. The group concluded that profits would be
increased if companies could communicate directly with patients. A resounding 70 percent
of the European Parliament voted against this recommendation.

Trials showing a positive treatment effect, or those with important or striking findings,
were much more likely to be published in scientific journals than those with negative
findings, a new review from The Cochrane Library has found."This publication bias has
important implications for healthcare. Unless both positive and negative findings from
clinical trials are made available, it is impossible to make a fair assessment of a drug's
safety and efficacy," says lead researcher, Sally Hopewell of the UK Cochrane Centre
in Oxford, UK.The international team of researchers carried out a systematic review of all
the existing research in this area. In addition to showing that negative results were
published less often, they found that if these results were eventually published, they
would take between one and four more years to appear in journals than studies showing
positive results.Results from one of the five studies in the review indicated that
investigators and not editors might be to blame. The reasons most commonly given for not
publishing were that investigators thought their findings were not interesting enough or
did not have time. "The registration of all clinical trial protocols before they
start should make it easier to identify where we are missing results," says Kay
Dickersin from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA, another of the researchers on
this project.

A diabetes expert has claimed that pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline threatened him
with legal action after he raised concerns about the safety of the company's anti-diabetes
drug rosiglitazone, marketed as Avandia.

Do medical schools affect the way
future doctors interact with drug companies?

Bulk of the approximately $21 billion dollars that pharmaceutical companies spend annually
to market their products is targeted to physicians, doctors in training and medical
students. Indiana University School of Medicine and the Regenstrief Institute researchers
report on interaction between drug companies, medical students and residents and conclude
that well-designed seminars, role playing and focused curricula can affect medical student
and resident attitudes and behavior toward drug companies.

Big Pharma Pushes Drugs That Cause
Conditions They Are Supposed to Prevent

Using the bone density measurements or "T scores" of a 30-year-old woman as a
standard, the new condition, osteopenia, had "boundaries so broad they include more
than half of all women over 50," writes Kelleher. And it didn't hurt that 10,000 bone
density measuring machines appeared in doctors' offices to detect the new disease -- only
750 existed in 1995 -- many owned and financed by Merck, whose anti-bone-thinning drug
Fosamax came online in 1995.

Modern medicine is firmly founded on the Germ Theory of Disease promulgated by
Louis Pasteur in the 1860s. Pasteurs 140-year-old theory is still the medical
paradigm upon which Western medicine fights disease as we enter the 21st century.

A study of pharmaceutical companies' marketing to physicians shows that doctors are most
influenced by brand preference and marketing that addresses the problems of drugs with
many side effects, according to the Management Insights feature in the current issue of
Management Science, the flagship journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the
Management Sciences.

Conventional medicine adherents have consistently asserted that its methods are
scientifically verified, and they have ridiculed other methods that are suggested to have
therapeutic or curative effects. In fact, conventional physicians have consistently worked
to disallow competitors, even viciously attacking those in their own profession who have
questioned conventional treatments or provided alternative modalities.

Dangerous Drug combinations are putting many people at risk, a fact few realize. As
Americans take more and more medications for everything from upset stomachs to depression,
drug clashes have fueled a new epidemic of unexpected, sometimes dangerous side effects
and complications. One recent study suggested that at least 1.3 million Americans have
prescriptions for drugs that could cause problems if taken togetherand that only
counts people with health insurance.

Big Pharma Spin Doctors Gather to
Plot New Public Relations Strategies for Influencing the FDA, Popular Press

Concerned by the increasingly negative public image of their industry, pharmaceutical
companies are meeting with major public relations associations in a conference intended to
plan public relations strategies for the coming months. According to a press release, the
First Annual Pharmaceutical Public Relations Symposium is intended to "cover key
issues and challenges [that drug] companies face in an industry that is under ongoing
political and media scrutiny."

Modern medicine is firmly founded on the "Germ Theory of Disease" promulgated by
Louis Pasteur in the 1860. Pasteurs 140-year-old theory is still the medical paradigm upon
which Western medicine fights disease as we enter the 21st century. But with a huge
increase today in infectious diseases and the rapidly rising epidemic of cancer, diabetes,
heart disease and other chronic illnesses; we have to wonder if Pasteurs theory is really
that sound.

Consider this alarming statistic from a report commissioned by the Nutrition Institute of
America in October, 2003 - 2.2 million hospital patients suffer Adverse Drug Reactions
(ADRs) to prescribed medicine each year leading to the deaths of 106,000 people. In other
words, over 2,000 Americans die each week from properly prescribed medicine in properly
prescribed doses.

This is a serious indictment of pharmaceutical medicine which is inextricably based on
Pasteurs germ theory.

New evidence shows that the drug makers Merck and Schering-Plough have conducted several
studies of their popular cholesterol medicine Zetia that raise questions about its risks
to the liver, but the companies have never published those results.

From this new estimate, it appears that pharmaceutical companies spend almost twice as
much on promotion as they do on R&D. These numbers clearly show how promotion
predominates over R&D in the pharmaceutical industry, contrary to the industry's
claim. While the amount spent on promotion is not in itself a confirmation of Kefauver's
depiction of the pharmaceutical industry, it confirms the public image of a
marketing-driven industry and provides an important argument to petition in favor of
transforming the workings of the industry in the direction of more research and less
promotion.

the federal government charged that Bristol-Myers Squibb paid out illegal gifts to doctors
and health-care providers between 2000 in 2003 to encourage them to promote and prescribe
the company's drugs. The company was also accused of artificial and fraudulent price
inflation in order to defraud public health-care programs on prescription costs and of
paying wholesalers and retailers to stock Bristol-Myers Squibb drugs. In addition, the
government charged the company with illegally promoting the prescription of Abilify, an
atypical antipsychotic, for non-approved, "off-label" use on children and
dementia patients.

Antidepressants, Bipolar Disorder
and the Chemical Enslavement of Humankind by Drug Companies

Big Pharma is constantly looking for new ways to develop its markets and generate more
profits. This is the inescapable directive of all corporations: Be more profitable,
regardless of the cost to society. In Big Pharma's case, the pursuit of this mission
inevitably leads to the targeting of an ever-increasing selection of pharmaceutical
consumers who have the potential to become lifelong customers.

With new drugs being reviewed by regulatory agencies and then released onto the market
faster than ever before, patients' safety is being compromised, warns a study published on
bmj.com today. Dr David Kao from the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, argues
that while drug regulatory bodies are under pressure to make new drugs available more
quickly, there are concerns that the deadlines for approving drugs have shifted the focus
away from safety. Kao reviews trends in drug approval times in the United States, and
suggests how drug marketing techniques could be used to improve the way new drugs are
monitored. Previous research has shown that drugs approved in the US during the two months
before the mandated deadline were more likely to be withdrawn for safety reasons or to
carry a warning. Today's marketing techniques are so sophisticated, says Kao, that once a
drug has been approved the products can be released on websites within 90 minutes. He
cites the example of Merck's new treatment (sitagliptin) for hyperglycaemia (high blood
sugar levels)within 14 days of approval 188 million patients or 73% of the insured
US population had been targeted by the marketing campaign.